Games That Weren't 64^®

Based on the Cartoon classic where a bunch of Chipmunks have a band and make loads of money while being exploited by their human (!) father. It was good when I was 10 years old anyway!

Alternative Software, never a company to miss a Cartoon licence, grabbed onto one for Alvin and the Chipmunks, and mention was made throughout several issues of Commodore Format in their Early Warning scanner.

Nothing else was ever mentioned about the game, so we can assume from past patterns of licenced games from Alternative that it was a Arcade Adventure, or a simple platform affair. Thanks to contributor Edwin Drost in October 2021, we learn that the game was to be a “platformy shoot’em up and collect’em up type of thingy. At first glance it looks a bit nobby.” according to Amstrad Action magazine.

Spectrum users almost saw the game when Your Sinclair declared that Alternative reported to them that the game was complete and ready to release. At that time they were evaluating the Spectrum scene. Maybe they were at the same stage with the C64 version too?

Thanks later to Marco Das and an old forum thread, we learn that a play tester “Toll” was at Alternative and remembered playing a complete game on the likes of the Amiga, Spectrum and C64. It was a standard sideways scrolling platformer game from left to right. It didn’t have many outstanding features, but had a very bad summersault for a jump. It wasn’t known who developed it exactly.

In October 2017, contributor to a C64 group on Facebook – Nathan Thomas-David Brown shared a competition scan from a comic book (currently unknown), which shows an actual screenshot of the game in action. It looks too hi-res to be C64 based, and is probably Amiga/ST – but a first glimpse that many will have seen of the game.

Sadly, even if the game is released – then Alternative may not allow the game to be released into the public domain. We’ll see, but first we need to figure out who was behind it.

Contributions: Marco Das, Nathan Thomas-David Brown, Edwin Drost

Supporting content

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• History

Gallery

Update history

• 23/10/21 – Added snippet from Amstrad Action thanks to Edwin Drost.
• 14/07/21 – Tidy up of the page and corrections.
• 14/10/17 – Competition scan found with a rare screenshot (I don’t think C64)
• 28/02/17 – Scans and confirmation about the game fully existing.